I was pleased to see that this does not install Mono by default (mostly thanks to the fact that KDE has so far managed to keep it out).

Nevertheless, users can easily block Mono from being installed at a later point, by using the package manager:sudo zypper al *mono*

The only issue I have experienced so far, is that the installer has the option to configure NTP and gives the option to sync the time, but there’s no network at that point so it fails. In previous versions I’m pretty sure that then kicked up the network wizard, but it doesn’t with 11.2 (at least, installing from the 64bit DVD that is).

Now, the computer boots to the log in screen just fine, but logging in causes the computer to instantaneously reboot the machine.

Creating a brand new user account and logging in also suffers the same problem.

Awesome!

Update: Changing the video driver from radeon to vesa stopped the system from instantaneously rebooting, however the machine freezes at the KDE loading screen (even magic keys don’t work!). Looks like something to do with hardware initialisation, perhaps kwin trying to enable something fancy.. not sure.

Update 2: I was able to log into KDE with the vesa driver and disable desktop effects. After a reboot the system no longer crashes with the radeon driver. I then re-enabled the desktop effects and rebooted. This time I can log in, the effects are enabled and it doesn’t crash. We’ll see if it lasts!

Yeeees.. finally one missing piece of the puzzle to make KDE 4.x a really killer desktop environment is almost complete, KOffice 2.0. It is scheduled for release 27th May (tomorrow where I live).

Years ago I realised that most of the applications I used were GTK based and so made the switch to GNOME. Now that KDE 4.x is really, really good, it’s time for me to switch back for a while.

While I really like OpenOffice.org, I want something more lightweight and KDE-centric. In my opinion, KOffice has been lagging behind for some time (and in many respects, still does), but in a GNOME world I just didn’t need it. Really, all I do need is just a nice little office program to create my data in valid ODF.

Now, with the release of KDE 4.3 just around the corner, it looks to me as though the KDE-only world is almost complete.

So, along with Koffice, we will soon have some other previously missing pieces such as Amarok 2 for music, K3b for burning and Kdenlive for video editing.